FirstVIP Research Report: LSDFi Protocol Lybra Finance

Intermediate2/16/2024, 12:51:33 AM
This article explains in detail the Lybra Finance project, an LSDfi stable currency protocol. Its main business model is to mortgage ETH or stETH to mint the stable currency eUSD, and use the proceeds of LSD to repurchase eUSD to earn interest on the stable currency. The annualized rate is between 7% and 9%. The interest on the stable currency comes from the interest on the ETH pledge. , so the higher the mortgage rate, the higher the interest. eUSD is maintained stable by over-collateralization, liquidation, and arbitrage. The LSDfi track has relatively good fundamentals, narrative value and user demand. Lybra Finance is currently the LSDfi protocol with the highest TVL. The first interest-bearing stable currency eUSD has a certain attraction for funds in the market. Therefore, this product deserves attention.

Investment Summary

Lybra Finance is an LSDfi stablecoin protocol. Its main business model is to mortgage ETH or stETH to mint the stablecoin eUSD. It can hold stablecoins to earn interest by repurchasing eUSD through the proceeds of LSD, with an annualized rate of between 7% and 9%. eUSD is maintained stable by over-collateralization, liquidation, and arbitrage. The ratio of the value of the collateral to the value of eUSD needs to exceed 160%; when the value of the collateral and eUSD do not meet a certain ratio, anyone can liquidate the pledged assets. And the liquidator will receive rewards; when eUSD is higher than 1 US dollar, users will tend to mint eUSD and sell it in the market for profit, so that the price will gradually return to one dollar. When eUSD is lower than one dollar, users will tend to buy eUSD in the market. The exchange of ETH in the protocol causes the price of eUSD to rise. This arbitrage model is relatively common in stablecoin protocols, but the specific effect is difficult to determine.

LSDfi is a type of Defi protocol based on ETH collateral. Common ETH pledge tokens include stETH, bETH, rETH, cbETH, wstETH, etc. Among them, stETH and wstETH account for the vast majority of LSDfi TVL, which is approximately US$650 million. The main development directions of the LSDfi protocol are lending, stablecoins, DEX, etc. In addition to Pendle, Lybra Finance and other protocols that mainly rely on LSDfi, established Defi protocols such as MakerDAO and Curve have also dabbled in LSDfi, weakening some LSDfi stablecoin protocols. Attraction to funding. The LSDfi track has relatively good fundamentals, narrative value and user needs. The user needs of LSDfi come from users who hope that the collateral can have exit liquidity and increase leverage to increase returns. The current LSDfi protocol can basically meet these needs.

The disadvantages of Lybra Finance are:

1) The project has no risk financing, the team is anonymous, code information and other disclosures are low, and there may be security risks;
2) The development of the project depends on the development of ETH derivatives;
3) The interest of eUSD essentially comes from the income from ETH staking. In the early and intermediate stages of the project, mining rewards need to be continuously invested to achieve continuous growth of TVL;
4) The value-added operation of eUSD holder balance is not transparent enough and may have potential security risks.

The advantages of Lybra Finance are:

1) The issued stable currency eUSD automatically earns interest and can attract LSD funds in the market;
2) It is currently the leader in LSDfi and attracts the attention of investors.

Therefore, this product deserves attention.

Note: The final “Focus” / “Not Focus” determined by FirstVIP is the result of a comprehensive analysis of the current fundamentals of the project based on the FirstVIP project evaluation framework, not a prediction of the future price movement of the project’s token. There are many factors that influence token prices, and project fundamentals are not the only factor. Therefore, it should not be assumed that a project will definitely experience a price drop just because it is determined as “Not Focus” in the research report. In addition, the development of blockchain projects is dynamic. If a project determined as “Not Focus” undergoes significant positive changes in its fundamentals, we may adjust it to “Focus.” Similarly, if a project determined as “Focus” undergoes significant negative changes, we will issue warnings to all members and may adjust it to “Not Focus.”

1. Basic overview

1.1 Project Introduction

Lybra Finance is an LSDFi protocol that focuses on stablecoin interest generation.

1.2Basic information[1]

2. Detailed explanation of the project

2.1Team

In Discord, the administrator stated that Lybra Finance is an anonymous team.

2.2 Funds

Lybra Finance is selling 5,000,000 tokens at a 0.3U IDO with no risk financing, for a total value of $1.5 million. 20% of the funds raised by IDO will be used to provide LBR/ETH LP, 40% of the raised funds will be used to mint eUSD, 20% of the raised funds will be used to provide eUSD/USDC LP, and 20% of the raised funds will be used for market making and operating expenses.

2.3 Code

The Github code page of Lybra Finance is (https://github.com/LybraFinance). The code page has too little information to generate a code report. The project has five libraries, and the V2 mode code will start in May 2023.

2.4 Products

Lybra Finance is an LSDfi protocol in which users can act as minters, holders, liquidators, and redeemers. Users’ income mainly comes from holding eUSD and earning income, minting eUSD and earning LBR tokens, staking LBR and sharing protocol income and LP rewards. Currently, stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market can be divided into three types. One is legal currency-collateralized stablecoins, such as USDT and USDC. These stablecoins are usually issued and managed by centralized institutions, and generally maintain a 1:1 mortgage ratio, which means Every time a stablecoin is issued, a legal currency needs to be pledged as collateral; one is a cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoin. A cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoin is a stablecoin minted with Bitcoin or Ethereum as the underlying asset, and the mortgage rate is usually high. at 100%; the last one is algorithmic stablecoin. Algorithmic stablecoin is a type of project that uses algorithms to keep the price of stablecoin stable. This type of project has a greater risk of going to zero. The Lybra Finance team believes that one drawback of stablecoins is the lack of interest income.With the upgrade of Ethereum Shanghai, stablecoins can have interest income. Utilizing liquid collateral derivatives will provide stablecoins with stable prices and stable interest rates. Lybra Finance uses ETH and stETH as the main underlying assets to generate the stablecoin eUSD. eUSD is a stable currency pegged to the US dollar. The interest comes from the LSD income generated by depositing ETH and stETH. The annualized rate of return is about 7%~9%. The interest income of eUSD comes from the pledge income of eth. Currently, the annualized yield of stETH is 3.8%, and the minimum collateral ratio of Lybra Finance is 160%. Therefore, the annualized yield of eUSD is between 7% and 9%. The higher the overall collateral ratio of the project, the more beneficial it is for eUSD holders’ earnings and the less favorable it is for eUSD mints’ earnings. Without mining income, mints may need to borrow repeatedly to increase leverage in order to achieve ideal earnings. Actual earnings may be lower than described by the project team.

The stability of eUSD is maintained by three methods: over-collateralization, liquidation mechanism and arbitrage opportunities. 1) Over-collateralization requires at least $1.5 worth of stETH as collateral for every 1 eUSD. Over-collateralization helps maintain stability by ensuring that the value of the underlying collateral is greater than the value of the issued eUSD; 2) Liquidation mechanism, Lybra adopts a liquidation mechanism, if the user’s mortgage rate is lower than the safe mortgage rate, any user can voluntarily become a liquidator People buy the liquidation part of the mortgaged stETH, and liquidation is divided into regular liquidation and comprehensive liquidation; 3) arbitrage mechanism, if the price of eUSD exceeds one dollar, users can mint new eUSD by depositing ETH as collateral, and then sell eUSD, As eUSD is sold, the price of eUSD will gradually return to 1 US dollar. If the eUSD price is lower than 1 US dollar, users can buy eUSD at a discount in the market, and then exchange it for 1 US dollar worth of ETH in the Lybra protocol. The user’s purchase Demand will increase as the spread widens, pushing the eUSD price back to $1. Because eUSD carries interest income, this arbitrage model may not be feasible. In fact, eUSD is often at a positive premium.

Figure 2-1 Liquidation curve of Lybra Finance

Minting

Minting requires that the user’s mortgage rate should be 160% higher than the safe mortgage rate. The mortgage rate depends on the price of Ethereum. If the price of Ethereum drops, the account may be liquidated. In addition, the product also has the concept of the overall collateralization rate, which refers to the ratio of the total value of all collateral in the protocol to the total supply of eUSD. If the overall mortgage rate falls below 150%, all users with a mortgage rate below 125% may be liquidated.

Figure 2-2 The main operation interface of Lybra Finance

Rigid redemption

Using eUSD to directly exchange for ETH is called a rigid redemption. During this process, users need to pay a 0.5% fee to encourage users to repay their debts instead of direct rigid redemption. However, this may cause eUSD to shift to <1 US dollar. Rigidity Redemption does not mean repaying debt. If redemption occurs, users who have turned on the redemption mode will lose part of the collateral and reduce the corresponding debt, and will also receive a 0.5% redemption fee.This means that the collateral that opens the redemption mode will become the exit liquidity for other users.

Figure 2-3 Rigid redemption process of eUSD

Mining

The main reward for mining on Lybra Finance is esLBR. Users can earn esLBR by staking LBR, minting eUSD, and providing liquidity for LBR/ETH LP and eUSD/USDC LP on the earn page. esLBR is a representation of staked LBR and holds the same value as LBR, with its supply being influenced by the total supply of LBR. esLBR cannot be traded or transferred, but it grants voting rights and allows for sharing of protocol earnings. Mining rewards primarily come in the form of esLBR. After unstaking esLBR and converting it to LBR, the conversion process takes 30 days. Currently, there are 2,321,792.63 esLBR tokens in the staking pool. Mining is an important mechanism for maintaining the growth of the project’s Total Value Locked (TVL).

V2

Lybra Finance is about to release the V2 mode, with the following main improvements: 1) Addition of new LSD assets as collateral, while setting minting limits and using isolated pools to reduce risks for the new LSD assets; 2) Activation of the new stablecoin peUSD, which is the LayerZero version of eUSD. LayerZero technology bridges eUSD from the Ethereum mainnet to the second layer. When eUSD is converted to peUSD, the locked eUSD will be held in the mainnet contract. The locked eUSD can be used for flash loans to facilitate liquidation and generate profits.; 3) Liquidation: The liquidation process for peUSD is similar to the eUSD liquidation process in V1. However, peUSD eliminates the comprehensive liquidation process of eUSD. This means that users with a collateral ratio below 150% but above 125% will not be subject to liquidation. The new liquidation process applies to both bridged peUSD and peUSD minted using LSD assets.

Is the mortgage rate >160% too high?

A higher collateral ratio leads to lower capital utilization. Among non-LSDfi stablecoin protocols, MakerDAO has the highest collateral ratio. For the protocol, a higher collateral ratio ensures more stability for the stablecoin value, as the price of ETH fluctuates. A decrease of 37.5 percentage points in the value of collateral assets with a collateral ratio of 160% would make the value of collateral assets equal to the value of stablecoins. For a collateral ratio of 150%, it would be a decrease of 33.3 percentage points, for 140% it would be 28.6 percentage points, for 130% it would be 23 percentage points, and for 120% it would be 16.6 percentage points. Looking at the past price trends of ETH, a decrease of 20-30 percentage points over a period of time is possible. Based on the calculated results, the difference between the minimum collateral ratios of 160% and 150% is not significant. For the protocol, it might be more reasonable to choose a minimum collateral ratio of 150%. However, LSDfi’s underlying asset is essentially a derivative of ETH, which may be less stable compared to ETH. Therefore, a higher collateral ratio is acceptable, and users who prioritize capital efficiency can directly purchase eUSD.

The interest on eUSD comes from:

The deposited ETH is automatically converted to stETH through Lybra Finance. As stETH grows over time, the additional income from stETH is distributed to protocol token LBR holders and stablecoin eUSD holders. For example, when User A deposits $135,000,000 worth of ETH to mint 80,000,000 eUSD, and User B deposits $15,000,000 worth of ETH to mint 7,500,000 eUSD, the current circulating supply of eUSD is 87,500,000, and the current collateral value is $150,000,000. The income from LSD after one year (5%) is $7,500,000, and the service fee generated in one year (1.5%) is $1,312,500. The total profit obtained by subtracting these two amounts is $6,187,500.

How does eUSD generate income?

Income generation for eUSD is achieved through an increase in the quantity of eUSD. When the protocol’s stETH balance increases due to LSD income or other reasons, the excess income is converted into eUSD tokens and distributed among existing eUSD holders. The eUSD obtained through the exchange of stETH is effectively burned, increasing the value of the remaining eUSD holders’ balances due to the increase in total value and decrease in total capital. It is also possible to generate income by directly exchanging other stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and FRAX for eUSD. Currently, eUSD is only traded against USDC on Curve, with a daily trading volume of around $300,000 to $400,000. The total circulation of eUSD is 170,468,361.77, and it is the only source of liquidity for eUSD withdrawals. The balance of eUSD is dynamic, representing the Ethereum shares held by the holders in the protocol. Regarding the dynamic change in eUSD balances, the answer provided by community administrators is that when the protocol generates $1,000 in income from rewards in a day, that $1,000 worth of stETH will be retained within the protocol. To distribute the income to eUSD holders, when someone wants to redeem stETH with eUSD, the protocol will give them the appreciated stETH and allocate the eUSD used for redemption to the current eUSD holders. There are two questions regarding this approach: it is unlikely that the daily interest on stETH will exactly match the redemption demand, and eUSD holders cannot see the holding information of eUSD on Etherscan. Therefore, these actions may not occur transparently on-chain every day.

Is there a risk of eUSD being unpegged?

There is a possibility of eUSD being unpegged when the price of Ethereum sharply declines. On March 12, 2020, due to congestion on the Ethereum network and soaring transaction fees, DAI, which was fully collateralized with ETH, became unpegged and incurred millions of dollars in bad debt. This type of unpegging risk exists for eUSD. The underlying asset of eUSD, stETH, comes from the decentralized Ethereum staking service provider, Lido Finance. stETH experienced a 5% unpegging in June 2022 before Ethereum enabled redemptions. The impact of this type of unpegging on eUSD may be temporary, but it cannot be ruled out that users, due to panic, may exhaust all withdrawal liquidity and cause further unpegging of eUSD. Currently, because directly purchasing eUSD with equivalent assets can obtain more ETH staking rewards than minting eUSD, eUSD may have a long-term premium.

Figure 2-4 eUSD trading K-line

How many application scenarios can eUSD generate?

The life of a stablecoin depends on how many application scenarios it has, and the biggest problem with decentralized stablecoins is the lack of application scenarios. The pioneering decentralized stablecoin DAI has a total of 661 trading pairs on various centralized and decentralized exchanges, providing much more liquidity than eUSD. The main reasons why DAI can achieve large-scale adoption are its early appearance, collateral assets including centralized stablecoin USDC and ETH, which subtly satisfy users’ dual requirements for the security and decentralization of decentralized stablecoins. eUSD, which uses stETH as its underlying asset, clearly cannot meet these requirements. The security of stETH is not as good as ETH itself, and eUSD is also limited by the growth of its limited stETH assets. Therefore, it is speculated that eUSD will still primarily serve as an interest-bearing certificate for ETH collateral and cannot compete in the stablecoin race.

Summary: Lybra Finance is an LSDfi stablecoin protocol that has pioneered the business model of stablecoin interest. Lybra Finance maintains the stability of the eUSD price through rigid redemption, over-collateralization, and arbitrage, and achieves stablecoin interest by repurchasing eUSD with LSD revenue. At the same time, it opens up token mining to attract funds and reduces token selling pressure through the release of tokens during the vesting period. Currently, it has become the protocol with the highest TVL in LSDfi. The V2 model will be expanded to L2 through LayerZero technology, and the TVL is expected to further increase. The product has no VC investment, an anonymous team, and a low level of code disclosure, so there may be certain risks.

3.Development

3.1 History

Table 3-1 Lybra Finance major events

3.2 Current situation

Figure 3-1 TVL change curve of Lybra Finance

Lybra Finance’s TVL currently stands at $236 million, up from just over $3 million in April 2023. There are 170 million eUSD minted, the average mortgage rate is 1.63, and the average health factor is 1.088. If a 1.5% handling fee is charged, the annual handling fee of the current agreement is US$2.566 million.

Figure 3-2 The casting situation of eUSD

3.3 The future

The team’s work plan for the third quarter of 2023 is:

1) Establish a secure multi-signature wallet; 2) Connect to the LayerZero protocol; 3) Deploy to Arbitrum; 4) Deploy lending functions; 5) Full-chain deployment; 6) Explore more composable Defi; 7) Based on Lybra DAO’s community suggests developing more features.

4. Tokenomic model

4.1 Token distribution

$LBR is the native token of Lybra Finance with a maximum supply of 100,000,000. $LBR holders can participate in voting and governance while sharing the protocol revenue. Lybra Finance’s revenue comes from a service fee of 1.5% of the total eUSD amount. The service fee collected by Lybra Finance will be distributed according to the proportion of LBR holders in the LBR pledge pool. . esLBR is a managed $LBR. The use cases of esLBR are 1) governance; 2) obtaining service fee income; 3) distributing to target groups as rewards; 4) obtaining treasury and protocol income distribution. esLBR exists mainly to reduce selling pressure on $LBR.

4.2 Currency holding situation

There are 3,400 holders of $LBR, and 57,157 transactions have occurred. Relatively speaking, the number of holders is small. If the number of holders can be further expanded in the future, the token may rise further.


Figure 4-1 Basic information of $LBR’s blockchain browser

The top 100 holders of $LBR account for 66.6% of the total number of tokens, which is less concentrated than the tokens of other projects. The top five holder addresses are basically those of centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges, and the main trading venue of $LBR is Uniswap.


Figure 4-2 Holder distribution of $LBR

5. Competition

5.1 Industry Overview

LSD refers to the liquid staking derivatives built on Ethereum Shapella upgrade. The Defi built on LSD is called LSDfi, and its goal is to provide higher yields for LSD. According to the data from Dune dashboard created by @hildobby, a total of 23,413,761 ETH has been staked, accounting for 19.66% of the total circulating ETH, with a total value of $43.78 billion. The highest staked project on Ethereum is Lido, accounting for 31.7% of the total staked amount, followed by Coinbase with 9.6%. The staked amount of ETH has been steadily increasing from 2020 until now. How to activate the market value of several hundred billion dollars is an important issue for various LSDfi projects. The main development directions of LSDfi are lending, stablecoins, and DEX. The top three new projects in terms of LSDfi market share are Lybra Finance, raft.fi, and Pendle, accounting for 48.3%, 7.679%, and 7.549% respectively. Projects that adopt stablecoins for LSDfi include Lybra Finance, Raft, and Gravita, with Lybra Finance’s stablecoin eUSD accounting for over 70% of the LSDfi stablecoin market.

Binance Research pointed out in a research report that the total TVL of the old LSDfi and the newer LSDfi is 6.35B. The TVL of the old protocol is approximately 8.76 times higher than that of the newer protocol. The TVL of the newer protocol has increased approximately since May 2023. 66.1%. With basically all protocols integrating with stETH, over-reliance on a single collateral can lead to an unhealthy growth model.

Figure 5-1 LSDfi track ranking

Lending is a product of human social and economic development, with its history dating back to ancient times. In modern financial systems, lending is an important financial activity that can promote economic development and social progress. In the Web3 industry, the lending track is also very important. The development history of the lending track can be divided into three stages: 1) The first stage was around 2017, when projects like MakerDAO began exploring decentralized stablecoins and lending protocols based on Ethereum. 2) The second stage was from 2018 to 2019, when projects like Compound introduced concepts such as liquidity mining, governance tokens, and peer-to-pool, incentivizing users to participate in the lending market and enjoy returns and governance rights. 3) The third stage is from 2020 to the present, when projects like Aave started innovating various lending models and features, such as flash loans, credit delegation, fixed rates, etc., improving the efficiency and flexibility of the lending market.

Lending and stablecoins can be combined, and lending protocols can be divided into protocols that issue their own stablecoins and protocols that do not. If a lending protocol issues stablecoins, then the business focus of this protocol is stablecoins. The earliest lending protocol to issue stablecoins was MakerDAO, and it is evident in MakerDAO’s description that the lending model is only to collateralize the stablecoin with underlying assets, and lending is not its primary intent. Stablecoins are a huge business in the industry. Firstly, the US dollar held in banks can generate interest. Secondly, centralized stablecoin institutions can purchase government bonds and commercial paper. Even MakerDAO, under the guise of doing RWA, has purchased government bonds. This allows the issuers of stablecoins to raise a large amount of usable funds through the exchange of “fake money for real money” and generate many low-risk returns. With a large capital base, the returns are considerable, which is an important reason for attracting teams to create stablecoins.

Figure 5-2 LSDfi’s proportion of stable coins

5.2 Comparison of competing products

Gravita

Gravita is an interest-free lending protocol with LSD as collateral, providing users with interest-free loans secured by Liquid Stake tokens and Stability Pool. The loans are issued in the form of stablecoin GRAI, a stablecoin with similar volatility suppression as LUSD. The mechanism’s token can generate debt worth up to 90% of the user’s collateral value. Gravita is built on the model of the lending protocol Liquidity Protocol. If the user repays the loan within six months, the interest will be refunded on a pro-rata basis, with the minimum interest equivalent to only one week’s interest.To reduce the volatility of GRAI, GRAI holders are allowed to redeem 1 GRAI with $0.97 worth of collateral, incurring a 3% redemption fee.

Raft.fi

Raft.fi is a stablecoin Lsdfi protocol. To use Raft, each Ethereum wallet address needs to open a new position. Each address is only allowed to have 1 position. The wrapped stETH needs to be deposited in the address as collateral to borrow. Out of R. It allows users to deposit stETH to generate stablecoin R. Raft combines the design features of SAI and LUSD to maintain the stability of R. Users need to hold wstETH in the position, the ratio of collateral to debt must reach at least 120%, and users need to lend at least 3000R. Raft uses borrowing spreads to maintain the stability of the R price. The borrowing interest rate is the sum of the basic interest rate and the borrowing spread, with an upper limit of 5%. The borrowing fee is the borrowing amount multiplied by the borrowing interest rate, which is paid using the stable currency R. The debt that users need to repay is borrowing and borrowing fees. When R is returned, it is immediately destroyed via the smart contract.[2]

There are three ways for R to be destroyed, namely: 1) Repayment. The borrower repays the lent R stablecoin in Raft and gets back the wstETH collateral. When users make repayment, they can choose to repay part or all of it. R token debt, but the debt balance after repayment cannot be less than 3000 R. 2) Redemption, R stable currency holders exchange other borrowers’ wstETH for R. The redemption function allows R stable currency holders to exchange it for an equal amount of wstETH collateral at any time. When a user uses R to exchange wstETH, The protocol will use R to repay a portion of each existing Position debt, and the repayment ratio is distributed in proportion to the collateral. In order to promote repayment rather than redemption, the team enabled the redemption spread, which is the redemption interest rate. As a component, the redemption spread needs to be higher than the zero interest rate on repayments. 3) Liquidation, the liquidator repays the debt of the borrower below the minimum mortgage ratio and receives mortgaged wstETH and liquidation rewards in return. When the value of the collateral is between 120% mortgage ratio and 100% mortgage ratio, the account will Eligible for liquidation. The liquidator reward is to encourage users to support protocol liquidation and to compensate liquidators for the risks they bear during the liquidation process. Raft also uses a base rate, which is used to regulate borrowing and redemption behavior and reduce the volatility caused by borrowing and redemption. When the base rate increases, borrowing and redemption will cost more money.Raft also features a lightning minting feature, which enables users to mint 10% of the total supply of R at once. Lightning minting can be used for leverage operations, increasing leverage by up to 11x in one go.

Summary: The ranking of LSDfi tokens by percentage amount is stETH, wstETH, sfrxETH. Users should note that wrapped tokens like wstETH can retain ETH staking rewards, while directly depositing stETH cannot. LSDfi’s TVL depends on the total market value of ETH and the number of derivatives generated by ETH. As established DeFi protocols like MakerDAO and Curve enter the LSDfi space, competition in the related field is intensifying. The main development directions for LSDfi include lending, stablecoins, DEX, yield strategies, and LSD index products. Overall, lending and stablecoin development are promising, with total TVL exceeding $2 billion. Conventional stablecoin protocols like Raft and Gravita have no advantages over MakerDAO except for some room for maneuvering in collateral ratios and fees. Additionally, MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI has more use cases and liquidity, making the development prospects for these conventional LSDfi protocols average.

One highlight of Lybra Finance is that the stablecoin eUSD can earn interest and protocol token LBR can be obtained through eUSD mining. This effectively attracts a significant portion of LSDfi funds, currently accounting for 48.3% of the entire LSDfi market. The project is about to launch V2 mode to further expand to L2 networks, which may further increase the project’s TVL. Therefore, this project is worth paying attention to.

6.Risk

1) Risk of excessive leverage: LSDfi is a second-layer solution for ETH collateral. Users earn income from staking ETH and minting eUSD stablecoin with stETH as collateral, generating interest. By using this solution, users increase the yield of their ETH collateral but also increase their leverage, which introduces potential risks to the protocol’s security.

2) Risk of stETH de-anchoring: stETH has experienced instances of becoming unanchored in the past. Although at that time, ETH withdrawals were not yet enabled, currently stETH cannot be immediately redeemed for ETH, which presents a certain degree of risk of becoming unanchored.

3) Centralization risks of Lido: Lido currently has 354,339 stakers, but there are only around fifty node operators, leading to network centralization. This may have adverse effects on stETH assets.

Disclaimer:

  1. This article is reprinted from [头等仓区块链研究院]. All copyrights belong to the original author [头等仓]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
  2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
  3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.

FirstVIP Research Report: LSDFi Protocol Lybra Finance

Intermediate2/16/2024, 12:51:33 AM
This article explains in detail the Lybra Finance project, an LSDfi stable currency protocol. Its main business model is to mortgage ETH or stETH to mint the stable currency eUSD, and use the proceeds of LSD to repurchase eUSD to earn interest on the stable currency. The annualized rate is between 7% and 9%. The interest on the stable currency comes from the interest on the ETH pledge. , so the higher the mortgage rate, the higher the interest. eUSD is maintained stable by over-collateralization, liquidation, and arbitrage. The LSDfi track has relatively good fundamentals, narrative value and user demand. Lybra Finance is currently the LSDfi protocol with the highest TVL. The first interest-bearing stable currency eUSD has a certain attraction for funds in the market. Therefore, this product deserves attention.

Investment Summary

Lybra Finance is an LSDfi stablecoin protocol. Its main business model is to mortgage ETH or stETH to mint the stablecoin eUSD. It can hold stablecoins to earn interest by repurchasing eUSD through the proceeds of LSD, with an annualized rate of between 7% and 9%. eUSD is maintained stable by over-collateralization, liquidation, and arbitrage. The ratio of the value of the collateral to the value of eUSD needs to exceed 160%; when the value of the collateral and eUSD do not meet a certain ratio, anyone can liquidate the pledged assets. And the liquidator will receive rewards; when eUSD is higher than 1 US dollar, users will tend to mint eUSD and sell it in the market for profit, so that the price will gradually return to one dollar. When eUSD is lower than one dollar, users will tend to buy eUSD in the market. The exchange of ETH in the protocol causes the price of eUSD to rise. This arbitrage model is relatively common in stablecoin protocols, but the specific effect is difficult to determine.

LSDfi is a type of Defi protocol based on ETH collateral. Common ETH pledge tokens include stETH, bETH, rETH, cbETH, wstETH, etc. Among them, stETH and wstETH account for the vast majority of LSDfi TVL, which is approximately US$650 million. The main development directions of the LSDfi protocol are lending, stablecoins, DEX, etc. In addition to Pendle, Lybra Finance and other protocols that mainly rely on LSDfi, established Defi protocols such as MakerDAO and Curve have also dabbled in LSDfi, weakening some LSDfi stablecoin protocols. Attraction to funding. The LSDfi track has relatively good fundamentals, narrative value and user needs. The user needs of LSDfi come from users who hope that the collateral can have exit liquidity and increase leverage to increase returns. The current LSDfi protocol can basically meet these needs.

The disadvantages of Lybra Finance are:

1) The project has no risk financing, the team is anonymous, code information and other disclosures are low, and there may be security risks;
2) The development of the project depends on the development of ETH derivatives;
3) The interest of eUSD essentially comes from the income from ETH staking. In the early and intermediate stages of the project, mining rewards need to be continuously invested to achieve continuous growth of TVL;
4) The value-added operation of eUSD holder balance is not transparent enough and may have potential security risks.

The advantages of Lybra Finance are:

1) The issued stable currency eUSD automatically earns interest and can attract LSD funds in the market;
2) It is currently the leader in LSDfi and attracts the attention of investors.

Therefore, this product deserves attention.

Note: The final “Focus” / “Not Focus” determined by FirstVIP is the result of a comprehensive analysis of the current fundamentals of the project based on the FirstVIP project evaluation framework, not a prediction of the future price movement of the project’s token. There are many factors that influence token prices, and project fundamentals are not the only factor. Therefore, it should not be assumed that a project will definitely experience a price drop just because it is determined as “Not Focus” in the research report. In addition, the development of blockchain projects is dynamic. If a project determined as “Not Focus” undergoes significant positive changes in its fundamentals, we may adjust it to “Focus.” Similarly, if a project determined as “Focus” undergoes significant negative changes, we will issue warnings to all members and may adjust it to “Not Focus.”

1. Basic overview

1.1 Project Introduction

Lybra Finance is an LSDFi protocol that focuses on stablecoin interest generation.

1.2Basic information[1]

2. Detailed explanation of the project

2.1Team

In Discord, the administrator stated that Lybra Finance is an anonymous team.

2.2 Funds

Lybra Finance is selling 5,000,000 tokens at a 0.3U IDO with no risk financing, for a total value of $1.5 million. 20% of the funds raised by IDO will be used to provide LBR/ETH LP, 40% of the raised funds will be used to mint eUSD, 20% of the raised funds will be used to provide eUSD/USDC LP, and 20% of the raised funds will be used for market making and operating expenses.

2.3 Code

The Github code page of Lybra Finance is (https://github.com/LybraFinance). The code page has too little information to generate a code report. The project has five libraries, and the V2 mode code will start in May 2023.

2.4 Products

Lybra Finance is an LSDfi protocol in which users can act as minters, holders, liquidators, and redeemers. Users’ income mainly comes from holding eUSD and earning income, minting eUSD and earning LBR tokens, staking LBR and sharing protocol income and LP rewards. Currently, stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market can be divided into three types. One is legal currency-collateralized stablecoins, such as USDT and USDC. These stablecoins are usually issued and managed by centralized institutions, and generally maintain a 1:1 mortgage ratio, which means Every time a stablecoin is issued, a legal currency needs to be pledged as collateral; one is a cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoin. A cryptocurrency-collateralized stablecoin is a stablecoin minted with Bitcoin or Ethereum as the underlying asset, and the mortgage rate is usually high. at 100%; the last one is algorithmic stablecoin. Algorithmic stablecoin is a type of project that uses algorithms to keep the price of stablecoin stable. This type of project has a greater risk of going to zero. The Lybra Finance team believes that one drawback of stablecoins is the lack of interest income.With the upgrade of Ethereum Shanghai, stablecoins can have interest income. Utilizing liquid collateral derivatives will provide stablecoins with stable prices and stable interest rates. Lybra Finance uses ETH and stETH as the main underlying assets to generate the stablecoin eUSD. eUSD is a stable currency pegged to the US dollar. The interest comes from the LSD income generated by depositing ETH and stETH. The annualized rate of return is about 7%~9%. The interest income of eUSD comes from the pledge income of eth. Currently, the annualized yield of stETH is 3.8%, and the minimum collateral ratio of Lybra Finance is 160%. Therefore, the annualized yield of eUSD is between 7% and 9%. The higher the overall collateral ratio of the project, the more beneficial it is for eUSD holders’ earnings and the less favorable it is for eUSD mints’ earnings. Without mining income, mints may need to borrow repeatedly to increase leverage in order to achieve ideal earnings. Actual earnings may be lower than described by the project team.

The stability of eUSD is maintained by three methods: over-collateralization, liquidation mechanism and arbitrage opportunities. 1) Over-collateralization requires at least $1.5 worth of stETH as collateral for every 1 eUSD. Over-collateralization helps maintain stability by ensuring that the value of the underlying collateral is greater than the value of the issued eUSD; 2) Liquidation mechanism, Lybra adopts a liquidation mechanism, if the user’s mortgage rate is lower than the safe mortgage rate, any user can voluntarily become a liquidator People buy the liquidation part of the mortgaged stETH, and liquidation is divided into regular liquidation and comprehensive liquidation; 3) arbitrage mechanism, if the price of eUSD exceeds one dollar, users can mint new eUSD by depositing ETH as collateral, and then sell eUSD, As eUSD is sold, the price of eUSD will gradually return to 1 US dollar. If the eUSD price is lower than 1 US dollar, users can buy eUSD at a discount in the market, and then exchange it for 1 US dollar worth of ETH in the Lybra protocol. The user’s purchase Demand will increase as the spread widens, pushing the eUSD price back to $1. Because eUSD carries interest income, this arbitrage model may not be feasible. In fact, eUSD is often at a positive premium.

Figure 2-1 Liquidation curve of Lybra Finance

Minting

Minting requires that the user’s mortgage rate should be 160% higher than the safe mortgage rate. The mortgage rate depends on the price of Ethereum. If the price of Ethereum drops, the account may be liquidated. In addition, the product also has the concept of the overall collateralization rate, which refers to the ratio of the total value of all collateral in the protocol to the total supply of eUSD. If the overall mortgage rate falls below 150%, all users with a mortgage rate below 125% may be liquidated.

Figure 2-2 The main operation interface of Lybra Finance

Rigid redemption

Using eUSD to directly exchange for ETH is called a rigid redemption. During this process, users need to pay a 0.5% fee to encourage users to repay their debts instead of direct rigid redemption. However, this may cause eUSD to shift to <1 US dollar. Rigidity Redemption does not mean repaying debt. If redemption occurs, users who have turned on the redemption mode will lose part of the collateral and reduce the corresponding debt, and will also receive a 0.5% redemption fee.This means that the collateral that opens the redemption mode will become the exit liquidity for other users.

Figure 2-3 Rigid redemption process of eUSD

Mining

The main reward for mining on Lybra Finance is esLBR. Users can earn esLBR by staking LBR, minting eUSD, and providing liquidity for LBR/ETH LP and eUSD/USDC LP on the earn page. esLBR is a representation of staked LBR and holds the same value as LBR, with its supply being influenced by the total supply of LBR. esLBR cannot be traded or transferred, but it grants voting rights and allows for sharing of protocol earnings. Mining rewards primarily come in the form of esLBR. After unstaking esLBR and converting it to LBR, the conversion process takes 30 days. Currently, there are 2,321,792.63 esLBR tokens in the staking pool. Mining is an important mechanism for maintaining the growth of the project’s Total Value Locked (TVL).

V2

Lybra Finance is about to release the V2 mode, with the following main improvements: 1) Addition of new LSD assets as collateral, while setting minting limits and using isolated pools to reduce risks for the new LSD assets; 2) Activation of the new stablecoin peUSD, which is the LayerZero version of eUSD. LayerZero technology bridges eUSD from the Ethereum mainnet to the second layer. When eUSD is converted to peUSD, the locked eUSD will be held in the mainnet contract. The locked eUSD can be used for flash loans to facilitate liquidation and generate profits.; 3) Liquidation: The liquidation process for peUSD is similar to the eUSD liquidation process in V1. However, peUSD eliminates the comprehensive liquidation process of eUSD. This means that users with a collateral ratio below 150% but above 125% will not be subject to liquidation. The new liquidation process applies to both bridged peUSD and peUSD minted using LSD assets.

Is the mortgage rate >160% too high?

A higher collateral ratio leads to lower capital utilization. Among non-LSDfi stablecoin protocols, MakerDAO has the highest collateral ratio. For the protocol, a higher collateral ratio ensures more stability for the stablecoin value, as the price of ETH fluctuates. A decrease of 37.5 percentage points in the value of collateral assets with a collateral ratio of 160% would make the value of collateral assets equal to the value of stablecoins. For a collateral ratio of 150%, it would be a decrease of 33.3 percentage points, for 140% it would be 28.6 percentage points, for 130% it would be 23 percentage points, and for 120% it would be 16.6 percentage points. Looking at the past price trends of ETH, a decrease of 20-30 percentage points over a period of time is possible. Based on the calculated results, the difference between the minimum collateral ratios of 160% and 150% is not significant. For the protocol, it might be more reasonable to choose a minimum collateral ratio of 150%. However, LSDfi’s underlying asset is essentially a derivative of ETH, which may be less stable compared to ETH. Therefore, a higher collateral ratio is acceptable, and users who prioritize capital efficiency can directly purchase eUSD.

The interest on eUSD comes from:

The deposited ETH is automatically converted to stETH through Lybra Finance. As stETH grows over time, the additional income from stETH is distributed to protocol token LBR holders and stablecoin eUSD holders. For example, when User A deposits $135,000,000 worth of ETH to mint 80,000,000 eUSD, and User B deposits $15,000,000 worth of ETH to mint 7,500,000 eUSD, the current circulating supply of eUSD is 87,500,000, and the current collateral value is $150,000,000. The income from LSD after one year (5%) is $7,500,000, and the service fee generated in one year (1.5%) is $1,312,500. The total profit obtained by subtracting these two amounts is $6,187,500.

How does eUSD generate income?

Income generation for eUSD is achieved through an increase in the quantity of eUSD. When the protocol’s stETH balance increases due to LSD income or other reasons, the excess income is converted into eUSD tokens and distributed among existing eUSD holders. The eUSD obtained through the exchange of stETH is effectively burned, increasing the value of the remaining eUSD holders’ balances due to the increase in total value and decrease in total capital. It is also possible to generate income by directly exchanging other stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and FRAX for eUSD. Currently, eUSD is only traded against USDC on Curve, with a daily trading volume of around $300,000 to $400,000. The total circulation of eUSD is 170,468,361.77, and it is the only source of liquidity for eUSD withdrawals. The balance of eUSD is dynamic, representing the Ethereum shares held by the holders in the protocol. Regarding the dynamic change in eUSD balances, the answer provided by community administrators is that when the protocol generates $1,000 in income from rewards in a day, that $1,000 worth of stETH will be retained within the protocol. To distribute the income to eUSD holders, when someone wants to redeem stETH with eUSD, the protocol will give them the appreciated stETH and allocate the eUSD used for redemption to the current eUSD holders. There are two questions regarding this approach: it is unlikely that the daily interest on stETH will exactly match the redemption demand, and eUSD holders cannot see the holding information of eUSD on Etherscan. Therefore, these actions may not occur transparently on-chain every day.

Is there a risk of eUSD being unpegged?

There is a possibility of eUSD being unpegged when the price of Ethereum sharply declines. On March 12, 2020, due to congestion on the Ethereum network and soaring transaction fees, DAI, which was fully collateralized with ETH, became unpegged and incurred millions of dollars in bad debt. This type of unpegging risk exists for eUSD. The underlying asset of eUSD, stETH, comes from the decentralized Ethereum staking service provider, Lido Finance. stETH experienced a 5% unpegging in June 2022 before Ethereum enabled redemptions. The impact of this type of unpegging on eUSD may be temporary, but it cannot be ruled out that users, due to panic, may exhaust all withdrawal liquidity and cause further unpegging of eUSD. Currently, because directly purchasing eUSD with equivalent assets can obtain more ETH staking rewards than minting eUSD, eUSD may have a long-term premium.

Figure 2-4 eUSD trading K-line

How many application scenarios can eUSD generate?

The life of a stablecoin depends on how many application scenarios it has, and the biggest problem with decentralized stablecoins is the lack of application scenarios. The pioneering decentralized stablecoin DAI has a total of 661 trading pairs on various centralized and decentralized exchanges, providing much more liquidity than eUSD. The main reasons why DAI can achieve large-scale adoption are its early appearance, collateral assets including centralized stablecoin USDC and ETH, which subtly satisfy users’ dual requirements for the security and decentralization of decentralized stablecoins. eUSD, which uses stETH as its underlying asset, clearly cannot meet these requirements. The security of stETH is not as good as ETH itself, and eUSD is also limited by the growth of its limited stETH assets. Therefore, it is speculated that eUSD will still primarily serve as an interest-bearing certificate for ETH collateral and cannot compete in the stablecoin race.

Summary: Lybra Finance is an LSDfi stablecoin protocol that has pioneered the business model of stablecoin interest. Lybra Finance maintains the stability of the eUSD price through rigid redemption, over-collateralization, and arbitrage, and achieves stablecoin interest by repurchasing eUSD with LSD revenue. At the same time, it opens up token mining to attract funds and reduces token selling pressure through the release of tokens during the vesting period. Currently, it has become the protocol with the highest TVL in LSDfi. The V2 model will be expanded to L2 through LayerZero technology, and the TVL is expected to further increase. The product has no VC investment, an anonymous team, and a low level of code disclosure, so there may be certain risks.

3.Development

3.1 History

Table 3-1 Lybra Finance major events

3.2 Current situation

Figure 3-1 TVL change curve of Lybra Finance

Lybra Finance’s TVL currently stands at $236 million, up from just over $3 million in April 2023. There are 170 million eUSD minted, the average mortgage rate is 1.63, and the average health factor is 1.088. If a 1.5% handling fee is charged, the annual handling fee of the current agreement is US$2.566 million.

Figure 3-2 The casting situation of eUSD

3.3 The future

The team’s work plan for the third quarter of 2023 is:

1) Establish a secure multi-signature wallet; 2) Connect to the LayerZero protocol; 3) Deploy to Arbitrum; 4) Deploy lending functions; 5) Full-chain deployment; 6) Explore more composable Defi; 7) Based on Lybra DAO’s community suggests developing more features.

4. Tokenomic model

4.1 Token distribution

$LBR is the native token of Lybra Finance with a maximum supply of 100,000,000. $LBR holders can participate in voting and governance while sharing the protocol revenue. Lybra Finance’s revenue comes from a service fee of 1.5% of the total eUSD amount. The service fee collected by Lybra Finance will be distributed according to the proportion of LBR holders in the LBR pledge pool. . esLBR is a managed $LBR. The use cases of esLBR are 1) governance; 2) obtaining service fee income; 3) distributing to target groups as rewards; 4) obtaining treasury and protocol income distribution. esLBR exists mainly to reduce selling pressure on $LBR.

4.2 Currency holding situation

There are 3,400 holders of $LBR, and 57,157 transactions have occurred. Relatively speaking, the number of holders is small. If the number of holders can be further expanded in the future, the token may rise further.


Figure 4-1 Basic information of $LBR’s blockchain browser

The top 100 holders of $LBR account for 66.6% of the total number of tokens, which is less concentrated than the tokens of other projects. The top five holder addresses are basically those of centralized exchanges and decentralized exchanges, and the main trading venue of $LBR is Uniswap.


Figure 4-2 Holder distribution of $LBR

5. Competition

5.1 Industry Overview

LSD refers to the liquid staking derivatives built on Ethereum Shapella upgrade. The Defi built on LSD is called LSDfi, and its goal is to provide higher yields for LSD. According to the data from Dune dashboard created by @hildobby, a total of 23,413,761 ETH has been staked, accounting for 19.66% of the total circulating ETH, with a total value of $43.78 billion. The highest staked project on Ethereum is Lido, accounting for 31.7% of the total staked amount, followed by Coinbase with 9.6%. The staked amount of ETH has been steadily increasing from 2020 until now. How to activate the market value of several hundred billion dollars is an important issue for various LSDfi projects. The main development directions of LSDfi are lending, stablecoins, and DEX. The top three new projects in terms of LSDfi market share are Lybra Finance, raft.fi, and Pendle, accounting for 48.3%, 7.679%, and 7.549% respectively. Projects that adopt stablecoins for LSDfi include Lybra Finance, Raft, and Gravita, with Lybra Finance’s stablecoin eUSD accounting for over 70% of the LSDfi stablecoin market.

Binance Research pointed out in a research report that the total TVL of the old LSDfi and the newer LSDfi is 6.35B. The TVL of the old protocol is approximately 8.76 times higher than that of the newer protocol. The TVL of the newer protocol has increased approximately since May 2023. 66.1%. With basically all protocols integrating with stETH, over-reliance on a single collateral can lead to an unhealthy growth model.

Figure 5-1 LSDfi track ranking

Lending is a product of human social and economic development, with its history dating back to ancient times. In modern financial systems, lending is an important financial activity that can promote economic development and social progress. In the Web3 industry, the lending track is also very important. The development history of the lending track can be divided into three stages: 1) The first stage was around 2017, when projects like MakerDAO began exploring decentralized stablecoins and lending protocols based on Ethereum. 2) The second stage was from 2018 to 2019, when projects like Compound introduced concepts such as liquidity mining, governance tokens, and peer-to-pool, incentivizing users to participate in the lending market and enjoy returns and governance rights. 3) The third stage is from 2020 to the present, when projects like Aave started innovating various lending models and features, such as flash loans, credit delegation, fixed rates, etc., improving the efficiency and flexibility of the lending market.

Lending and stablecoins can be combined, and lending protocols can be divided into protocols that issue their own stablecoins and protocols that do not. If a lending protocol issues stablecoins, then the business focus of this protocol is stablecoins. The earliest lending protocol to issue stablecoins was MakerDAO, and it is evident in MakerDAO’s description that the lending model is only to collateralize the stablecoin with underlying assets, and lending is not its primary intent. Stablecoins are a huge business in the industry. Firstly, the US dollar held in banks can generate interest. Secondly, centralized stablecoin institutions can purchase government bonds and commercial paper. Even MakerDAO, under the guise of doing RWA, has purchased government bonds. This allows the issuers of stablecoins to raise a large amount of usable funds through the exchange of “fake money for real money” and generate many low-risk returns. With a large capital base, the returns are considerable, which is an important reason for attracting teams to create stablecoins.

Figure 5-2 LSDfi’s proportion of stable coins

5.2 Comparison of competing products

Gravita

Gravita is an interest-free lending protocol with LSD as collateral, providing users with interest-free loans secured by Liquid Stake tokens and Stability Pool. The loans are issued in the form of stablecoin GRAI, a stablecoin with similar volatility suppression as LUSD. The mechanism’s token can generate debt worth up to 90% of the user’s collateral value. Gravita is built on the model of the lending protocol Liquidity Protocol. If the user repays the loan within six months, the interest will be refunded on a pro-rata basis, with the minimum interest equivalent to only one week’s interest.To reduce the volatility of GRAI, GRAI holders are allowed to redeem 1 GRAI with $0.97 worth of collateral, incurring a 3% redemption fee.

Raft.fi

Raft.fi is a stablecoin Lsdfi protocol. To use Raft, each Ethereum wallet address needs to open a new position. Each address is only allowed to have 1 position. The wrapped stETH needs to be deposited in the address as collateral to borrow. Out of R. It allows users to deposit stETH to generate stablecoin R. Raft combines the design features of SAI and LUSD to maintain the stability of R. Users need to hold wstETH in the position, the ratio of collateral to debt must reach at least 120%, and users need to lend at least 3000R. Raft uses borrowing spreads to maintain the stability of the R price. The borrowing interest rate is the sum of the basic interest rate and the borrowing spread, with an upper limit of 5%. The borrowing fee is the borrowing amount multiplied by the borrowing interest rate, which is paid using the stable currency R. The debt that users need to repay is borrowing and borrowing fees. When R is returned, it is immediately destroyed via the smart contract.[2]

There are three ways for R to be destroyed, namely: 1) Repayment. The borrower repays the lent R stablecoin in Raft and gets back the wstETH collateral. When users make repayment, they can choose to repay part or all of it. R token debt, but the debt balance after repayment cannot be less than 3000 R. 2) Redemption, R stable currency holders exchange other borrowers’ wstETH for R. The redemption function allows R stable currency holders to exchange it for an equal amount of wstETH collateral at any time. When a user uses R to exchange wstETH, The protocol will use R to repay a portion of each existing Position debt, and the repayment ratio is distributed in proportion to the collateral. In order to promote repayment rather than redemption, the team enabled the redemption spread, which is the redemption interest rate. As a component, the redemption spread needs to be higher than the zero interest rate on repayments. 3) Liquidation, the liquidator repays the debt of the borrower below the minimum mortgage ratio and receives mortgaged wstETH and liquidation rewards in return. When the value of the collateral is between 120% mortgage ratio and 100% mortgage ratio, the account will Eligible for liquidation. The liquidator reward is to encourage users to support protocol liquidation and to compensate liquidators for the risks they bear during the liquidation process. Raft also uses a base rate, which is used to regulate borrowing and redemption behavior and reduce the volatility caused by borrowing and redemption. When the base rate increases, borrowing and redemption will cost more money.Raft also features a lightning minting feature, which enables users to mint 10% of the total supply of R at once. Lightning minting can be used for leverage operations, increasing leverage by up to 11x in one go.

Summary: The ranking of LSDfi tokens by percentage amount is stETH, wstETH, sfrxETH. Users should note that wrapped tokens like wstETH can retain ETH staking rewards, while directly depositing stETH cannot. LSDfi’s TVL depends on the total market value of ETH and the number of derivatives generated by ETH. As established DeFi protocols like MakerDAO and Curve enter the LSDfi space, competition in the related field is intensifying. The main development directions for LSDfi include lending, stablecoins, DEX, yield strategies, and LSD index products. Overall, lending and stablecoin development are promising, with total TVL exceeding $2 billion. Conventional stablecoin protocols like Raft and Gravita have no advantages over MakerDAO except for some room for maneuvering in collateral ratios and fees. Additionally, MakerDAO’s stablecoin DAI has more use cases and liquidity, making the development prospects for these conventional LSDfi protocols average.

One highlight of Lybra Finance is that the stablecoin eUSD can earn interest and protocol token LBR can be obtained through eUSD mining. This effectively attracts a significant portion of LSDfi funds, currently accounting for 48.3% of the entire LSDfi market. The project is about to launch V2 mode to further expand to L2 networks, which may further increase the project’s TVL. Therefore, this project is worth paying attention to.

6.Risk

1) Risk of excessive leverage: LSDfi is a second-layer solution for ETH collateral. Users earn income from staking ETH and minting eUSD stablecoin with stETH as collateral, generating interest. By using this solution, users increase the yield of their ETH collateral but also increase their leverage, which introduces potential risks to the protocol’s security.

2) Risk of stETH de-anchoring: stETH has experienced instances of becoming unanchored in the past. Although at that time, ETH withdrawals were not yet enabled, currently stETH cannot be immediately redeemed for ETH, which presents a certain degree of risk of becoming unanchored.

3) Centralization risks of Lido: Lido currently has 354,339 stakers, but there are only around fifty node operators, leading to network centralization. This may have adverse effects on stETH assets.

Disclaimer:

  1. This article is reprinted from [头等仓区块链研究院]. All copyrights belong to the original author [头等仓]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
  2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
  3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.
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